25 Days of Christ - Day 25

This project, The 25 Days of Christ, has been an amazing experience for me this season. I have been touched by many things...

1. How similar all of our feelings are of the Savior...
All the posts that were sent to me conveyed a love for Jesus Christ and a desire to be more like Him. How amazing and powerful is that? At times, in the society we live in, it is easy to feel like the only person that is trying to follow Jesus Christ. This project proved to me that this is not so. There are so many of us that are quietly trying to follow the path He has set for us, and there is power in that.

2. How different, personal, and individualized our experiences are with the Savior...
Every single person had something different to share. Everybody had had a personal experience of feeling the love of the Savior that was entirely theirs. The Savior Jesus Christ works in a very personal way. He is not distantly observing our lives--He is in the details. We can have a personal relationship with Him, and that is something that nobody can take away from us.

3. I purposely didn't list any of the denominations of the posters during the project. Of course, if you really want to go on a sleuthing adventure you could probably figure it out by different context clues, but the reason I wanted to do that was to help us create more understanding and unity in the Christian community. Instead of going into a post thinking, "Oh they are (insert specific denomination here), I am going to disagree with everything in this post," simply because of pre-conceived notions about the denomination, I wanted us to go in just reading each other's experiences and feeling our own faith grow in Jesus Christ. I loved the moments I had reading where I said to myself, "yea. Me too. I have felt that too." I guess what I am trying to say is that horror of horrors--you might have been touched by a post written from the perspective of that particular Christian denomination you just can't stand. Newsflash: this blog is written by a Mormon. Be careful, or you might be touched by something one of those awful Mormons says about Christ :). By keeping people's denominations unknown, I felt it helped us to keep our hearts open to be edified and our judgements subdued. Competition and contempt between Christian sects is quite silly to me. We are all Christians. We all love Christ. We should be able to have a fellowship and open communication in that. We shouldn't feel scared to share these things--but instead more freely share in order to strengthen one another.

4. There were a couple people that I messaged individually asking if they would be willing to post in order to get the ball rolling on this project. I did this, really, by just going through people in my head thinking of people that I knew were great Christian people that would enjoy sharing. After messaging a couple people, I thought to myself, "Wow. I hope I live my life in a way that I would come to somebody's mind as a Christian that would be willing to share." Of course, I only messaged a couple of the wonderful Christian people that I know. And of course a person can not judge the quality of another's life and certainly not their discipleship BUT what a thought that was. I want to live my life in a way that it is always apparent what I believe and base my life off of. I don't want there to ever be a question in that.

5. I loved being allowed to hear the tender parts of peoples' souls. Every person that posted here is a dear friend and somebody that I admire. It felt so wonderful and fresh to hear these things that are most important to us but that we might not always feel comfortable sharing. There is power in sharing. I really do believe that it is through small and simple people that the Lord brings about great and marvelous things. We really can be a light.

I am so so grateful for the people that contributed to this project. Thank you for having the courage to make yourself vulnerable, open up, and share. Thank you for being willing to stand as a witness and share what you know to be true. I love discipleship, and I love these people who have shared the example of their discipleship with me.

I love my Savior Jesus Christ, and I have tried my best to really dedicate this season to Him. This project was one of my main efforts to do that. The more we focus on Him, the happier we are. Period.

I have tried, at times, to fill the cracks in my life with other things to make me happy. There is no replacement for the Savior of the world. We cannot be truly happy without Him.

I choose Him daily, and He heals me daily. I celebrate Him and all that He is.

Merry Christmas.

- Coco